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PHOTOS: Artist Takes The Occupy Movement Underwater

by on November 26, 2011

Huffington Post…

First New York, then other cities around the world. Now the Occupy movement has spread underwater and it doesn’t even involve humans. Taiwanese artist Vincent J.F. Huang has created an installation that uses marine animals to examine the burgeoning protest movement. “The Atlantis Project,” which is on exhibit at Artspace in Sydney, Australia, features a number of marine animals “occupying” models of famous world landmarks. Through the course of the exhibit, the aquarium’s coral will continue to grow “until the life-sustaining resources of the aquarium are fully consumed,” and the coral loses its pigment . The aquarium and the life it contains are a microcosm, according to a press release. “The project metaphorically represents the limitations of earth’s resources.” The project’s connection to the occupy movement is also explained: Outrageous affairs are occurring and infuriated marine creatures are occupying icons of human civilization underwater. The spectacles of corruption and aberration in modern Atlantis are exposed! Art imitates life and Occupy Wall Street in other ways beyond this project as well. ARTINFO’s Ann Binlot observed parallels between the current movement and Philip Glass’ opera “Satyagraha,” about Mahatma Gandhi. Earlier this month, an Occupy Wall Street committee reached out to artist Mark di Suvero , whose sculpture “Joie de Vivre” is located in New York’s Zucotti Park. View photos of The Atlantis Project installation below, courtesy of Vincent J.F. Huang: —

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Robert Kuttner: American Policy Made in China

by Robert Kuttner on November 21, 2011

Huffington Post…

Last week, President Obama forcefully declared that the United States would not withdraw from the Asia-Pacific, telling the Australian Parliament that he was dispatching 2,500 Marines as well as ships and aircraft to serve at a base in the Australian port of Darwin. The message, in case anybody missed it, was unmistakably directed at China. But while Obama was making symbolic military gestures, his administration was doing nothing serious to contest China’s growing threat to America’s economic base. That threat is spelled out in an official government document that should be mandatory reading for all of us — the annual report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission , released last Thursday. What’s noteworthy is that this is a bipartisan commission created by Congress, and that all of its 12 commissioners, six Republicans and six Democrats, signed off on the report. The basic findings: China is a mercantilist and authoritarian state that is determined to appropriate not only U.S. jobs but also U.S. advanced technology through illegal subsidies, suppression of worker rights, and deals with U.S. industry that are one part lucrative carrot (cheap wages, state capital) and one part illegal stick (if you want to do business in China, take a Chinese partner and share your trade secrets). Even then, you must produce mainly for export back to the U.S., not for sale in China. Worse still, U.S. industry has been happy to take these deals, which makes them a domestic ally of the China lobby. While our government periodically makes half-hearted complaints that the Chinese currency, the Renminbi, is seriously undervalued, American corporations like that just fine — because it makes their exports to the U.S. from Chinese factories even cheaper. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which fights industrial policy at home, lobbies fiercely against any pressure from Washington against Beijing’s mercantilism. So while the Obama administration flails around with small-bore military gestures and bipartisan free trade deals with smaller countries, it does not dare to challenge the grand bargain America’s corporations have made with China, or China’s own illicit policies. Among the Commission’s more important findings: The U.S.-China trade gap continues to widen, especially in advanced technology. China sold the US $81 billion in advanced technology products in the 12 months ending last August, and imported just $13.4 billion worth. The total trade deficit with China was a record $273 billion, more than half of America’s total trade deficit with the world. By mid-2011, China’s overall trade surplus of $3.2 trillion was up $800 billion in just a single year. Although China agreed in 2001 to stop explicitly requiring foreign companies to surrender their technology to China in return for market access and investment opportunities, the government in Beijing still employs several tactics to coerce foreign firms to share trade secrets with Chinese competitors. China’s industrial policy in general and its indigenous innovation policy in particular seek to circumvent accepted intellectual property protections and to extort technology from U.S. companies. These requirements and extortions explicitly violate prohibitions of the World Trade Organization. China is becoming a national security threat, both because it is an increasingly important player in the supply chain for advanced components no longer made in the U.S., and because of its sophistication in cyber-warfare: The U.S. government, foreign governments, defense contractors, commercial entities, and various nongovernmental organizations experienced a substantial volume of actual and attempted network intrusions that appear to originate in China. Of concern to U.S. military operations, China has identified the U.S. military’s reliance on information systems as a significant vulnerability and seeks to use Chinese cyber capabilities to achieve strategic objectives and significantly degrade U.S. forces’ ability to operate. Despite the threatening and unpredictable conduct of North Korea, the Chinese Communist Party appears to have calculated that its interests are better served by the support of the [North Korean] regime than by its removal. Likewise, China’s relationship with Iran undermines international efforts to curtail Iran’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and support of international terrorism. China continues to be an autocratic, one-party state that brutally represses dissent, even as it becomes a more effective state-led, pseudo-capitalist world power. Despite China’s increasing productivity, the Chinese government suppresses domestic consumption so that it can have ultra-low wages and cheap capital to build its economic machine and bribe American industry to collaborate with its mercantilism. Its state-owned industry sector is still immense, as its favoritism for domestic companies in its public procurement. Because of the American reliance on Chinese capital to finance the U.S. public debt and American capital markets and because so many of our largest corporations have made their separate peace with the Chinese regime, we may have already reached a tipping point where Washington is unwilling to make more than token complaints that Beijing knows not to take seriously. Though China’s suppression of the value of its currency has been thoroughly documented, Treasury Secretary Geithner has repeatedly refused to formally cite China as a currency manipulator, which would compel the U.S. government to pursue sanctions. While the West teeters on the brink of a second recession and perhaps a collapse of the Euro, China’s autocratic state capitalism is largely unchallenged by either the U.S. or Europe. After the most recent European summit meeting desperately sought to cobble together a new bailout fund, European leaders went hat in hand to Beijing, where they were told in no uncertain terms that if they wanted China’s help, they needed to stop pressing trade complaints and change China’s status from “non-market” to “market” economy. This is how China exercises its immense leverage to tilt the playing field even more extremely in Beijing’s favor. As the Commission reports, this is the 10th year of China’s provisional membership in the World Trade Organization. Though the U.S. government and others still have some leverage to change China’s behavior, if they choose to use it, the Commission reports that China hopes gradually to “strong-arm its way into market economy status, and shake free of restrictive terms and obligations in its [WTO] accession agreement.” Many Americans naively emphasize China’s great progress in improving its educational system. While we can only applaud the social strides China has made, the source of America’s growing economic disadvantage vis-à-vis Beijing lies elsewhere. While Republicans and Democrats elsewhere agree on nothing, all commission members after extensive testimony and study agreed on the mounting threat of Chinese mercantilism. The problem is that other Republicans and Democrats — such as those in Congress and in the White House, have a much more benign view of the Chinese government and continue to naively promote a “free trade” that China doesn’t practice. And while U.S. industry occasionally complains about the outright theft of intellectual property, for the most part the largest corporations like the deal they have with its outsourcing, its cheap and docile labor and its capital subsidies by the Chinese government. The Commission reports that this costs the U.S. between 600,000 and 2.4 million jobs. It is ironic that both the Republican jingoism, support for expanded democracy overseas, and saber rattling against other perceived threats, and the Obama administration’s desire to look credibly tough in the Pacific, both stop well short of defending America’s real national interests against Beijing. As for those 2,400 Marines soon shipping out to Australia, they just might have the sweetest posting of any U.S. servicemen and women anywhere. Reenlistments should be no problem. Our newly truculent policy toward China might as well be called “Throw another shrimp on the barbie.” Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect and a senior fellow at Demos. His latest book is A Presidency in Peril .

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WATCH: Faces of Zuccotti Park: The PR Guy

November 9, 2011

This is the fourth part in a series profiling the protesters of Occupy Wall Street. At certain times of day the number of cameras and recording devices in Zuccotti Park appear to rival the protester signage. The press table attracts them all. Here, reporters can glean information on story ideas, learn about scheduled events and strike up friendly conversation with members of the press relations working group. Freelance public relations consultant Bill Dobbs has been donating his time at the table since the protest began on Sept. 17. You may find him there, peaking out from under a copy of the Occupied Wall Street Journal , or passing a phone number to a frazzled reporter. “I’ve been around a lot of activism — anti-war organizing, gay organizing, AIDS organizing — and I’ve never seen anything remotely like this,” he said. Watch the video below to hear more of Bill’s perspective and anecdotes from his experiences at OWS.

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Gas Prices Dropped Nearly 4 Cents In The Past 2 Weeks

November 7, 2011

(Reuters) – U.S. average retail gasoline prices fell almost 4 cents a gallon over the last two weeks as the weak economy prevented refiners and retailers from passing their higher costs along to consumers, according to an industry analyst. The national average for self-serve regular unleaded gas was nearly $3.43 a gallon on Nov 4, having fallen 3.82 cents per gallon since the last report on Oct. 21 by the Lundberg survey. The survey is based upon visits to about 2,500 gas stations in the United States. “Prices of crude oil rose in the past two weeks, but we did not see it at the pump,” said Trilby Lundberg, editor of the survey. She said refiners suffered declining margins during the period, meaning there was a smaller difference between the wholesale selling price of gasoline and the cost of crude oil. Retailers, meanwhile, were also unable to pass along higher costs due to declining gasoline demand. “This is directly because of poor economic conditions,” Lundberg said. “The economy has damaged the work commute, which is the chief input to gasoline demand.” Should crude oil prices keep climbing, Lundberg said refiners and retailers will not be able to continue swallowing their higher costs. But she said costs of crude might not rise in the near-term, in part because of expanding supplies from Libya. Los Angeles, at $3.83 a gallon, had the highest average price for self-serve regular unleaded gas, while the lowest price was $3.06 a gallon in Albuquerque, New Mexico. (Reporting by Ransdell Pierson; editing by Gunna Dickson)

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iPad-Maker’s $12-Billion Deal Faces Major Hurdles

October 30, 2011

By Luciana Lopez and Stuart Grudgings JUNDIAI, Brazil (Reuters) – The nondescript stretch of asphalt is an unlikely symbol of Brazil’s attempt to lift its economy into a new high-tech era. If officials in the industrial town of Jundiai get their way, it will soon be named Steve Jobs road — in homage to the late Apple Inc co-founder and a nod to the expected windfall that producing iPads and iPhones here will bring. Brazil’s government has loudly proclaimed a deal it says is worth $12 billion for Taiwanese technology giant Foxconn to produce iPads and build a whole new industry based around screens used in an array of consumer electronics from smartphones to televisions. But the infamous “Brazil cost” — shorthand for the bureaucracy and high taxes that plague business in the country — is already overshadowing the deal, complicating negotiations with Foxconn over the broader investment plan. The likely need for large state subsidized loans to lure Foxconn also revives concerns about the state’s heavy hand in Brazil’s economy. The deal’s transformative potential for Brazil is clear — a home-grown technology industry could move the commodities giant up the value-added chain to join the likes of Taiwan and South Korea, reducing its dependence on manufactured imports from Asia. Yet critics say Brazil’s shallow labor pool and poor infrastructure make it ill-prepared to make the leap to high-end work and that it risks being stuck at the low end — assembling components designed and made elsewhere. At first, Foxconn will have to fly in most of the key components such as semiconductors, modems and screens from China, as Brazil attempts to raise its ability to produce more of them locally. “We are selling our market very cheaply, giving tax incentives for a company to come and produce something that is already developed in the world market,” said Joao Maria de Oliveira, a researcher at the government-linked Institute for Applied Economic Research, or IPEA. “It’s not something that adds much value and it won’t leave much here.” The amount of value added to Apple products by Foxconn’s approximately one million workers in China is a mere $10 or so per device, according to a study by researchers at the University of California, Irvine. Brazil has cut taxes and duties on tablet production in a move that should reduce the retail price by about a third and is phasing in production requirements to foster a local components industry. Separately, it is in talks with Foxconn on a package of incentives, including priority customs access, more tax breaks and subsidized loans from state development bank BNDES to secure the bigger investment in high-end screens. It isn’t hard to see what’s in it for Foxconn, Apple and other foreign companies, including Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd that have expressed interest in making tablets here. Apple will gain better access to Brazil’s voracious consumers, who have faced high prices for its products due to hefty import tariffs, and will create a jumping-off point for other rapidly growing Latin American countries. Foxconn, the world’s largest contract electronics company, with around a third of the global market, would gain a vital foothold in Latin America’s largest economy and reduce the risks of having so much Apple production in China. Producing in Brazil would also give Foxconn and Apple preferential access to Brazil’s partners in the Mercosur customs union — Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay. But the “Brazil cost” raises doubts over whether Apple will be able to make the iPad cheaply enough for the Brazilian market and use it as a major base to export to the United States and Latin America. Brazil’s consumer market is a huge draw for companies such as Apple, but analysts say the domestic industry will likely take years to move beyond assembly to higher-end production. “It will take at least five, six years to create the entire ecosystem there,” said Satish Lele, vice president, consulting, Asia Pacific at Frost & Sullivan in Singapore. “I don’t think they (Brazil) are ready to support huge growth as far as the electronics sector is concerned.” THE BRAZIL COST The Foxconn factory near “Steve Jobs” road is rumored by Brazilian media to already be producing iPhones and is expected to start churning out iPad tablets by December for sale to Brazil’s growing middle class. The company, whose main listed vehicle is Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, has already hired more than 1,000 people in Jundiai, a medium-sized city an hour away from Sao Paulo, to work at a new plant. Jundiai is planning to build a technology park and nearby towns are also looking to draw more such investment. “We’re the BRICs of Brazil,” said Carmelo Paoletti Neto, a spokesman for the town, comparing the region to role played the emerging powerhouses Brazil, Russia, India and China on the global stage. But the starting monthly wage for members of the metalworkers’ union in Jundiai is about 1,058 reais ($605) — nearly double the 2,000 yuan ($315) minimum wage Foxconn paid in China as of last October. Those wage pressures are likely to make it hard for the iPad price to fall any time soon to a range that would give it the mass-market appeal it enjoys in the United States. Tablet sales in Brazil will jump to 450,000 this year from 105,000-110,000 last year, according to consulting firm IDC, surging to above 1 million next year. That is significant growth — but the 60 percent of Brazilian households without a computer won’t necessarily rush out to buy tablets, cautioned Jose Martim Juacida, an analyst with the company. “The first computer purchase is usually a desktop or a laptop, because a desktop can be shared,” he said. (Additional reporting by James Pomfret in Hong Kong; Lee Chyen Yee and Clare Jim in Taiwan; editing by Kieran Murray, Martin Howell and Andre Grenon) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions

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WATCH: Bankers Taped To Lamp Poles In Stunt

June 22, 2011

An Australian bank’s fees are so low that competitors have duct-taped some of its employees to lamps hovering yards above ground. Or so those responsible for the bank’s marketing might have you believe. The video stunt , part of the award-winning “Break Up” campaign for the National Australia Bank, is the latest in a series of viral marketing efforts by Melbourne-located Clemenger BBDO, a communications agency. Based on the idea that the National Australia Bank is “breaking up” with the other three big Australian banks, it recently took home top honors for Public Relations at the Cannes Lions Festival . The campaign has used a number of traditional and new media resources to gain exposure, including break-up tweets , a stunt in which waiters presented rival banks’ executives with a break-up cake. Cannes Public Relations Jury President Dave Senay said he was impressed with NAB’s dynamic campaign, which helped attract 225,000 new customers since it began in February. “It’s sort of like a conceptual jujitsu,” Senay’s quoted by Australian news site news.com.au , “where you take the power of the opposition and use it against them. It was superbly executed.”

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WATCH: Man Receives Foreclosure Notice For $0.00

June 8, 2011

Of all the foreclosure warnings issued during the housing crisis, perhaps oddest is the one demanding no money at all. Earlier this year, in Northampton, Massachusetts, a man, referred to in reports only as Mark, received a notice demanding that he pay $0.00 to his mortgage lender, Bank of America, or his home would be seized, according to local television network News 22 WWLP . The notice surprised Mark, who had consistently made his mortgage payments, yet it was indeed no joke, as Mark found his credit score had been downgraded. Despite the gravity of the situation, Mark understood the absurdity of it all. “It says, you owe us zero dollars, zero cents. I’m going to write a check to them for zero dollars and have it clear? I couldn’t help but laugh,” he told News 22 WWLP, who, in turn, informed Bank of America of the story after Mark himself had struggled to get in contact with the bank. Turns out, an electronic filing error caused Mark’s payments to end up in the wrong place. Bank of America made right after the mix-up, making sure Mark’s credit score was restored and, of course, allowing him to keep his home. For his trouble, he also got a little extra in the form $150 and a gift certificate. The story is only the latest in a string of bizarre foreclosure incidents. In Jacksonville, Florida, home flipper Perry Laspina ended up not having to pay the remainder of his mortgage on an investment property first purchased in 2006, AOL Real Estate reported in April. After the value of his investment plunged, the story goes, Laspina found no buyers or renters and so simply stopped making payments. His lender, Wells Fargo, was apparently not at odds with the idea, and the loan was written off, the house subsequently given to Laspina. Others have found success by taking more direct action against banks. Instead of being foreclosed upon, one couple in Naples, Florida actually foreclosed on Bank of America. After the bank failed to compensate Warren and Maureen Nyergers for legal fees leftover from a wrongful foreclosure lawsuit, the couple, with the help of their lawyer and two sheriff’s deputies, began legally seizing assets from the bank’s branch office. Then of course, there’s the Bank of America that foreclosed on itself in Charlotte, North Carolina. In that case, Bank of America has filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the owner of a building housing one of the bank’s own branches. Watch the News 22 WWLP news segment here: I-Team:Man gets a $0 foreclosure notice: wwlp.com

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Under Pressure, OPEC Hammers Out Deal to Raise Oil Supply

June 8, 2011

VIENNA (Ramin Mostafavi and Alex Lawler) – OPEC producers on Wednesday hammered out a deal to raise oil supplies for the first time in four years to support the fragile world economy. Under pressure from consumer countries to contain fuel inflation, Saudi Arabia hopes to convince the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to lift production by as much as 1.5 million barrels a day, Gulf delegates said. They said that one option could be an initial one million bpd increase with a promise of another 500,000 bpd to come in three months time. Iran offered to host an emergency meeting within three months to review policy, an Iranian source told Reuters. Initial opposition to an increase from Iran shifted to a proposal for a modest 700,000-one million bpd increase during a closed session of ministers, the Iranian source said. Iran’s acting oil minister Mohammad Aliabadi struck a conciliatory note at the start of the meeting. “Iran is a member of OPEC and will go with the decision of the majority,” Aliabadi told reporters. As OPEC’s biggest producer and the only one with any significant spare capacity, Saudi usually gets its way. But long-time price hawks Iran and Venezuela plus Ecuador, Iraq and Angola all want to keep oil prices above $100 a barrel. Brent crude traded near $116 a barrel. BASELINE? Also at issue is the baseline for any increase. As the meeting started it was not clear whether an increase would come on top of current output or from OPEC’s out-of-date production target, which is much lower. Delegates said Saudi would prefer to use April OPEC output of 26.33 million bpd as the baseline rather than the old official target of 24.84 million set in December 2008. If Riyadh gets its way, OPEC would be committing to a real increase rather than a cosmetic deal that leaves Saudi to pump more unilaterally outside the official agreement. An increment of, say, 1 million bpd on top of April output would lift OPEC’s official target for 11 members by 2.51 million bpd to 27.35 million. Iraq, not bound by a quota, is pumping an additional 2.7 million. Venezuela is holding to a tough line. “We do not agree with production being increased now, we must continue to consolidate balance in the market and we have to defend fair prices,” Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Tuesday in Ecuador. Apparently backing Gulf Arab producers are Nigeria and Algeria who sit on a committee that on Tuesday recommended a one-million-bpd increment. SAUDI PUMPING MORE REGARDLESS Regardless of the policy decision, Riyadh will pump more. A Gulf official said Saudi was already raising output by at least 500,000 bpd in June to 9.5-9.7 million bpd. Saudi output was last as high in the middle of 2008 after oil prices set a record $147 a barrel, shortly before recession sent prices crashing. Forecasts suggest more oil is required to stop oil prices rising again. OPEC’s Vienna secretariat sees demand in the second half of the year 1.7 million bpd higher than current cartel output. Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Some Federal Food Service Workers Make More Than State Governors

June 6, 2011

Despite the political power, governors aren’t always the most well-paid government employees in their state. In fact, a recent report from the Congressional Research Service finds that 77,057 federal government employees nationwide make more than their respective state’s governor. The report, requested by Republican Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, reviews 2009 federal employee salaries across the country, and comes during the on-going debate over whether public sector pay rates are draining state budgets. An array of government positions offer higher pay rates than that of governor. Government medical officers, for instance, are the most likely to be paid more than their governor with 18,351 employees nationwide receiving higher pay, according to the report. Air traffic controllers are the second most likely with 5,170 earning more than their governors. Some chaplains, archaeologists and food service workers are also paid more than their state governor, the report said. On his website , Senator Coburn stated that government employees deserve to be paid fairly but was concerned with much of the report’s findings due to the struggling economy. “This report begs for an explanation of why interior designers, recreation planners, and other public employees are enjoying higher salaries than state governors,” he said. And it’s not just federal workers receiving handsome pay, either. In California, state-employed lifeguards are often paid well over $100,000. And athough that still falls short of the California governor’s $212,179 salary, it exceeds the salaries of other state governors, such as Maine’s Paul LePage, who is paid only $70,000. But the problem doesn’t lie with the salaries of full-time government employees, according to Beth Moten, legislative and political director for the American Federation of Government Employees . She says that pay rates for government contractors are what need to be reevaluated, not that of government employees who provide valuable services to the public. “So the government’s paying $700,000 and more for contractor salaries, and Sen. Coburn worries about the pay of physicians who care for wounded soldiers?” Moten asks, according to the Washington Times . “If those governors want to make more money, they should either become contractors or try applying to medical school.”

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$969m top bid for Boon Lay Way site « mypropertyblog

June 3, 2011

The third highest bid of $785.1 million or $820 psf ppr came from a Keppel Land-led joint venture together with Perennial Real Estate . Other participants in the tender were Frasers Centrepoint, … CMA, CMT and CapitaLand’s wholly-owned unit, CapitaLand Commercial , submitted their bid through JG Trustee and JG2 Trustee in a joint venture . CMA holds a 50 per cent stake in the venture, CMT has a 30 per cent stake, and CapitaLand owns a 20 per cent stake. …

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Investorium.tv Multicommodity Showcases Indochine (ASX:IDC), Australian Bauxite (ASX:ABZ) and Zamia Metals (ASX:ZGM) in Sydney on July 4th

June 2, 2011

Investorium.tv Multicommodity Showcases Indochine (ASX:IDC), Australian Bauxite (ASX:ABZ) and Zamia Metals (ASX:ZGM) in Sydney on July 4th

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Nippon Gas (TYO:8174) Agrees To Buy A Strategic Stake In Australian Power And Gas Company Limited (ASX:APK)

May 31, 2011

Nippon Gas (TYO:8174) Agrees To Buy A Strategic Stake In Australian Power And Gas Company Limited (ASX:APK)

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Sundance Resources Limited (ASX:SDL) Response To Australian Financial Review Article Of 30 May 2011

May 30, 2011

Sundance Resources Limited (ASX:SDL) Response To Australian Financial Review Article Of 30 May 2011

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Anglo Australian Resources Nl (ASX:AAR) Identified Targets For Massive Copper-Zinc Mineralisation At Leonora Project

May 25, 2011

Anglo Australian Resources Nl (ASX:AAR) Identified Targets For Massive Copper-Zinc Mineralisation At Leonora Project

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USD Index Continues To March Towards 9800, Australian Dollar Trades Within Descending Triangle

May 23, 2011

USD Index Continues To March Towards 9800, Australian Dollar Trades Within Descending Triangle

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David Paul: Oil Price Swings as a Dollar Hedge Pose a New Threat to Our Fiscal Future

May 19, 2011

The announcer on the radio gave the news: Oil prices fell back below $100, as the dollar strengthened…. That the price of oil would be a newsworthy event was not new. Since the OPEC oil embargo and gas lines of the 1970s, periodic high oil prices have made news, as they crimped the American pocketbook, and caused cascading political consequences. Last week, faced with the economic and political consequences of high gas prices, President Obama sidled up to the Drill, Baby, Drill camp and offered his support to measures to support domestic oil production. Increased domestic oil exploration and production is probably a good idea. After all, the U.S. is the largest consumer of oil, and both our national security and economic security would be enhanced by reduced dependency on oil imports. This, of course, has been the bi-partisan stance of presidential administrations dating back at least to the Nixon administration. And in terms of environmental impact, opposing oil production in the United States is not necessarily a laudable stance–if one’s concern is about global environmental impact–as production in Nigeria, for example, is certainly subject to lower environmental standards than would apply in South Dakota or Alaska. But the President’s call for increased domestic production and exploration did not reflect new insights on U.S. energy policy or how oil dependency affects our foreign policy and military engagement. The President, of course, was responding to the price of gasoline at the pump. This is a cyclical political script dating back forty years, which is pulled out of the can when gas prices rise. We need more production. We need more conservation. We need alternative sources of supply. Wind. Solar. Tar sands. Horizontal drilling. Hydraulic fracturing. The stuff we learn in those moments of pump price political pandering. The issue reached an extreme during the 2007-08 presidential primary season when oil prices surged upward. The candidates and political parties fulminated in high lather about cause and effect, supply and demand, and ultimately who was to blame for our pain. As Goldman Sachs predicted $200 oil, candidates vacillated between calls to eliminate the gas tax, to tax the speculators driving up the price or to drill, baby, drill. Then the price collapsed. Months before the economy came unglued in the fall of 2008, crude oil prices came back to earth. After peaking over $130 around July 4th, the price was back below $100 by Labor Day, and continued down. All the talk of drilling and T. Boone Pickens wind farms died away. This time, the storm abated before any legislation could be passed, so there was no new ethanol fiasco. No new oil shale tax credits. No new market distorting initiatives put in place by lobbyists for one industry or another seeking an opportunity to benefit from the public’s fleeting attention. Months later, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission settled the question of whether the price spike was driven by real or speculative demand. Outside of the public view, and far from the political limelight, the CFTC concluded that speculation was indeed the major factor in the price spike, as distinct from “natural” forces of supply and demand driven by economic growth and declining reserves. That is to say, demand for the consumption of oil was not the driver, but instead it was demand for oil contracts as a financial instrument. This conclusion is a salient one for our nation’s energy policy, and our monetary policy as well. It may seem to be a peculiar feature of the modern economy that commodity price speculation drives the welfare of families and individuals. But whether it is the American family planning a summer vacation or a fruit vendor far away in Tunisia, the prices of commodities traded in Chicago and other financial capitals do indeed touch daily life in the real world. This is not news. And it is not a modern day phenomenon, as commodity price speculation and hoarding have afflicted daily life throughout history, and Tunisia’s was not the first government to fall due to high food prices. Just ask Marie Antoinette. What is notably today is the direct linkage between currency trading and commodity markets. Oil prices fell back below $100, as the dollar strengthened…. As illustrated in the graph below, oil today has become the new asset class for hedging against dollar risk in global trading. Today, the U.S. dollar stands alone as the reserve currency of the world economy–the currency that nations use for investing their own reserves and for denominating commodity and other transactions. Despite efforts–such as the creation of the euro–to supplant the dominance of the dollar, no alternative has emerged. The structural flaws of the euro were exposed in the 2008 collapse, as the U.S. Federal Reserve emerged as the sole backstop for the global financial system. Japan’s economy remains weak and threatened by an aging population. The renminbi will not be a real currency for global trading purposes until China is willing to relinquish its managed peg and expose its economy to real market forces. As shown here, oil has become a nearly perfect hedge against fluctuations in the dollar. The peak price of oil–the red dashed line–in the summer of 2008 came just after the low point of the dollar that same year. The ensuing collapse in oil prices mirrored the rise in the dollar through the early months of the financial collapse. Then the price of oil moved upward–mirroring the rally in gold–as the dollar value declined once again in the wake of Federal Reserve policy driving liquidity into the banking system and the dollar downward through early this year. Then finally, as announced on the radio, the dollar is now rallying in anticipation of the end of QE2, and the oil price rise has abated. The linkage between monetary policy and oil prices raises questions for how a consistent domestic energy policy can be implemented if critical energy market price signals are distorted by linkages with monetary policy. Federal energy policies are presumably designed to spur investment into energy development–oil, gas and alternatives–but the such investments rely on the reliability of market pricing as an indicator of supply and demand equilibrium. If oil pricing increasingly reflects non-supply and demand factors, and is in part influenced by Federal Reserve policies and actions, there are significant ramifications for our energy policies. In simple terms, if the role of oil as an asset class can be expected to significantly affect the price of oil and add to price volatility over time, investors in energy industries will have to consider that volatility and those characteristics as much as actual supply and demand for energy as they consider investment decisions. The impact of the evolution of oil from a physical to a financial commodity is far reaching, as the decline in the value of the dollar and the correlated rise in oil pricing has most adversely impacted those nations whose currency is tied to the dollar. China is grappling with that challenge now. By adhering to a dollar peg and declining to float the renminbi, China has been forced to accept the inflationary consequences of growing energy costs. As illustrated here, cost escalation in the price of oil has been most significant for those whose currency is tied closest to the dollar. Accordingly, India and China saw major spikes in oil prices in their respective local currencies, both in 2008 and this year, as compared the modest impacts in the Euro, and negligible impacts in the Australian dollar. It may be that with the end of QE2, the dollar will stabilize, and with it the rhetorical drumbeat for new energy policies will subside. But the lesson should be internalized into our national debate over debt and deficits, as this same oil price shock that emerged from deliberate Fed policy to depress the value of the dollar will be visited upon us with greater ferocity should global bond markets finally give up on our ability to put our fiscal house in order, and leave us with a decline in the value of the currency–and accelerating energy costs– that is out of our control.

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Forex Correlations: Australian Dollar Proxy for S&P 500, Gold, Oil Prices

May 17, 2011

Forex Correlations: Australian Dollar Proxy for S&P 500, Gold, Oil Prices

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James Bond Sells Out

May 3, 2011

James Bond’s only loyalty is to the Queen, and being a badass: for 50 years, no temptress or evil Communist villain could lure him. Turns out, what those double agents and cackling evil doers were lacking were watches and some Chinese electronics. The Australian reports that producer MGM and distributor Sony will work to procure $45 million in product placement advertising in the new James Bond film , shattering the previous record of $20 million in “Minority Report.” Sony will be sending out brand ambassadors to a number of companies, including Chinese tech empires. Of course, corporate influence in 007′s adventures is nothing new; he raced around the worldwide in a name-dropped Aston Martin for years before deliberately switching over to a BMW. Known for his fine taste in luxury, Bond’s watches, clothing and other accessories have long been sponsored by those looking for good marketing by association; there’s an entire website dedicated to the Bond Lifestyle . As AskMen.com notes , if Tom Ford was good enough for James Bond in “Quantum of Solace,” he’s good enough for you. In 2006, Forbes noted that Sony had cut back to six brand advertisers in “Casino Royale,” eschewing them for promotional partnerships and higher costs for those that do put their products in the film. In 2002, “Die Another Day” had nine partnerships. However much money they raise in product placement, it’s a salient example of the growing corporate influence in the screenplays of films, a phenomena tackled in Morgan Spurlock’s new film, “Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold.” In other Bond news, The Hollywood Reporter relays that the film, still officially untitled, may shoot scenes in India . For more on the new Bond partnerships, click over to The Australian .

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Weekly Money Market Review: Swiss franc, Australian dollar hit historic highs

May 3, 2011

Weekly Money Market Review: Swiss franc, Australian dollar hit historic highs

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Guest Commentary: Australian Dollar Long & Short Term Outlook

April 29, 2011

Guest Commentary: Australian Dollar Long & Short Term Outlook

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Guest Commentary: Australian Dollar Long & Short Term Outlook

April 29, 2011

Guest Commentary: Australian Dollar Long & Short Term Outlook

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Forex Correlations: Australian Dollar High-Yield Proxy for Gold Trades

April 5, 2011

Forex Correlations: Australian Dollar High-Yield Proxy for Gold Trades

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Jane White: The Social Security Fix: End Corporate Welfare

March 28, 2011

With momentum building to rein in record budget deficits, Democrats are sharply divided over whether to tackle Social Security by raising the retirement age and/or raising the income ceiling that is taxed from the first $106,800 of wages to the first $170,000. Senator Majority Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Chuck Schumer are lining up against such measures and Reid scheduled a rally on Capitol Hill on Monday to show support for Social Security and opposition to cuts in benefits. Bur why are the only options on the table to cut or not to cut what is already a meager wage replacement scheme? Moreover, we need to acknowledge that our personal and federal financial deficits are more a function of corporate tax dodges than reckless spending. How about actually taxing the companies that got rid of pensions as a way of bankrolling more generous Social Security benefits, along with forcing them to turn 401(k) plans into real pensions? Let’s face it, while the working class is struggling to make ends meet and unemployment remains stubbornly high, the corporate class is doing just fine. U.S. corporate profits hit an all-time high at the end of 2010, according to data from the federal Bureau of Economic Analysis. Corporations reported an annualized $1.68 trillion in profit in the fourth quarter, exceeding the previous record of $1.65 trillion in the third quarter of 2006. Not only are companies reaping profits but they are laughing all the way to the bank when it comes to overseas tax breaks. Thanks to an arm-twisting in 2009 by the CEOs of IBM, Caterpillar, Cisco and others, BusinessWeek reports that the Obama administration backed down from its proposal to raise some $160 billion by hoisting taxes on U.S. companies overseas profits. As a result of various overseas tax dodges, many multinationals pay less than the statutory rate of 35%, according to The Analyst’s Accounting Observer; Big Pharma paid around 23% in 2008 and info tech companies paid about 26%. Between tax breaks, tax cuts and the fact that hedge fund managers can pay capital gains tax instead of income tax, we’ve created a corporate welfare state. The corporate share of the nation’s receipts has shrunk from 30% of all federal revenue in the mid-1950s to 6.6% in 2009. Since federal revenue in 2009 was $2.1 trillion, if the corporate share had stayed at 30%, that would have brought in $630 billion in revenues in that year alone. I apologize to readers who may be tired of reading my rants about the retirement crisis, but this is the biggest economic disaster that nobody’s talking about except for a recent article in the Wall Street Journal . If 85% of Boomers can’t afford to retire, college graduates won’t be able to find jobs. What’s more, If these Boomers have to transform themselves from spenders into savers, that shift is going to take a wrecking ball to the 70% of U.S. economic growth that’s driven by consumer spending. As I said in a previous post, even if Social Security were solvent, it’s downright stingy. The only workers for whom 70% of wages will be replaced by Social Security are those making minimum wage at age 65; since benefits average $1,067 a month. Given that the median wage for that age cohort is around $65,000, only a tiny minority of Americans can rely on Social Security alone. We need to force companies to bankroll a more secure retirement, whether it’s footing more of the bill for Social Security and/or making 401(k) plans into actual pensions by contributing the equivalent of 9% of pay to their accounts, as Australian employers are required to do. What’s tragic about the current stand-off between the Tea Party anti-tax zealots and the Democrats is that as recently as the mid-1990s there was an actual consensus among liberals and conservatives, including the antigovernment Americans for Tax Reform and Ralph Nader’s liberal Public Interest Research Group, that strove to curtail subsidies and tax breaks for business. Sen. John McCain went so far as to call for an independent “corporate welfare commission,” declaring that “Congress has not got the political guts to address this issue of corporate pork.” Unfortunately, I couldn’t find any updates showing that this commission was ever created, more evidence that this partisan divide is turning this country into a shipwreck.

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Japanese Yen Traders Fade The Rally, Australian Dollar At Risk For Breakout

March 16, 2011

Japanese Yen Traders Fade The Rally, Australian Dollar At Risk For Breakout

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Hackers Plan Bank Of America Email Leak On Monday Exposing "Corruption And Fraud"

March 14, 2011

(Reuters) – Anonymous, a hacker group sympathetic to WikiLeaks, plans to release e-mails obtained from Bank of America Corp early Monday morning, according to posts on the group’s Twitter feed. The group, unrelated to the document leak website founded by Julian Assange, said it plans to release documents exposing “corruption and fraud” at the largest U.S. bank by assets. A representative of Anonymous said the documents relate to the issue of whether Bank of America has improperly foreclosed on homes. The representative added that he had not seen the documents, but he has been briefed on their contents. A Bank of America Corp spokesman said the documents were non-foreclosure related clerical and administrative documents stolen by a former Balboa Insurance employee. The division — which BofA has since agreed to sell to Australian insurer QBE Insurance Group — provides mortgage and auto insurance for banks, and provides home insurance for consumers. “We are confident that his extravagant assertions are untrue,” the spokesman said. (Reporting by Joe Rauch; Editing by Gunna Dickson and Dhara Ranasinghe) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Euro At Crossroads Ahead Of EU Summit, Australian Dollar Reversal To Slow Ahead Of 100-Day SMA

March 10, 2011

Euro At Crossroads Ahead Of EU Summit, Australian Dollar Reversal To Slow Ahead Of 100-Day SMA

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Japanese Yen To Hold Range, Australian Dollar Reversal Slows Ahead Of 100-Day SMA

March 10, 2011

Japanese Yen To Hold Range, Australian Dollar Reversal Slows Ahead Of 100-Day SMA

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Joan K. Smith: Startup Bus: An Entrepreneurial Rite of Passage En Route to SXSW

March 9, 2011

From Odysseus to the Merry Pranksters, the road trip is the ultimate rite of discovery. This classic rite is taking a new twist on highways across the country from March 8 through 10: As I write, six buses filled with teams of sleep-deprived innovators — hackers, designers, marketers, dreamers — are headed to Austin, TX on a collective quest to prove that, with the right combination of energy and talent, a viable business startup can be launched from scratch in just 48 hours. As Elias Bizannes relates , this particular Odyssey started as a joke over drinks in early 2010. Sitting with a group of friends in Silicon Valley, where he is the financial manager with at Vast.com and heavily involved in mentoring tech entrepreneurs, the subject of travel plans for South by Southwest Interactive festival came up. Someone suggested making an entrepreneur’s roadtrip of it — renting a bus and filling it with a collection of enterprising talent to develop, hackathon style, business startups en route. The March festival was only about a month away, but Bizannes put up a website — actually, a mere splash screen announcing, “YOU AND A TEAM OF STRANGERS ON A BUS TRAVELING AT 60 MILES PER HOUR HAVE 48 HOURS TO CONCEIVE, BUILD, AND LAUNCH A STARTUP.” To his surprise, this tease almost immediately caught the attention of TechCrunch , who published a piece on the project, now officially dubbed Startup Bus. Faster than you can say “game on,” Bizannes’ inbox exploded with e-mails from hundreds of would-be “bustrepreneurs” wanting in. “In the space of three days it went from an image on a website, with my credibility on the line, to a fully scoped out operation with sponsorship and 25 [accepted] participants,” recalls Bizanne. The joke-over-drinks genesis of Startup Bus aside, Bizannes has an evangelical zeal about cultivating entrepreneurship and engendering connections. An Australian native who transplanted to Silicon Valley in 2009, he describes being struck by the energizing aspect of the community’s alumni networking, with new enterprises continually built around networks of former co-workers who provide an ongoing culture of support and collaboration. Ultimately, with Startup Bus, he was hoping to create an emotionally intense setting that would mimic, in a highly compressed fashion, the working relationships that build between work colleagues over the space of one to five years — the type of relationships that fuel the culture of innovation driving Silicon Valley. Less than the actual startups devised, he wanted to build a new type of alumni network forged by shared challenges, one that would have lasting impact on all their future endeavors. In this, the first Startup Bus was a tremendous success. “We went from strangers to best friends in two weeks,” Bizannes says. This core group now forms the leadership of the 2011 incarnation, with alumni serving as the “conductors” of individual buses — responsible for everything from recruitment and fundraising to the logistics of making sure their bus arrives on time. A total of 170 selected participants will form self-assigned teams, on buses departing from San Francisco, New York, Cleveland, Chicago, Miami, and Los Angeles. The conductors have an individual level of autonomy in selecting participants from their respective cities and setting working parameters, although certain ground rules apply, a “Bustrepreneur’s Honor Code.” The most important condition of the Code is that all projects must be conceived and generated on the bus — meaning no existing code, business, or projects are allowed. Justin Isaf is one of the original bustrepreneurs, and this year is conductor of the NYC-to-Austin bus and enthusiastic Community Manager. He describes the pressure of putting out a finished, viable product on such short notice and in collaboration with heretofore strangers under sometimes difficult conditions (e.g. sporadic wi fi connections on the road) is part of the magic. “The more you push people, the more they will rise to the challenge,” he says. Isaf’s dedication to the project is such that he quit his day job two weeks ago for this full-time, fully volunteer position with Startup Bus, embodying the type of “crazy commitment” he says is a key to being chosen for the trip. So essential is this quality, in fact, that he was leaving a few of the spots for his bus open until the very last minute: “The type willing to get on the bus on such short notice is just the level of craziness we’re looking for.” All the final Startup Bus projects will be completed and ready for judging by 11:59 pm CST March 10. They will then be posted on the StartUpBus.com website, where the public can view on vote on six teams – one from each bus – who will pitch their startups at the judging party on the evening of March 14.

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British Pound At Crossroads Ahead Of BoE, Australian Dollar To Hold Range

March 9, 2011

British Pound At Crossroads Ahead Of BoE, Australian Dollar To Hold Range

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AUD/USD: Trading the Australian Employment Report

March 8, 2011

AUD/USD: Trading the Australian Employment Report

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21 Airlines Fined For Price Fixing

March 7, 2011

WASHINGTON — When the airline industry took a nose dive a decade ago, executives at global carriers scrambled to find a quick fix to avoid financial ruin. What they came up with, according to federal prosecutors, was a massive price-fixing scheme among airlines that artificially inflated passenger and cargo fuel surcharges between 2000 and 2006 to make up for lost profits. The airlines’ crimes cost U.S. consumers and businesses – mostly international passengers and cargo shippers – hundreds of millions of dollars, prosecutors say. But the airlines caught by the Justice Department have paid a hefty price in the five years since the government’s widespread investigation became public. To date, 19 executives have been charged with wrongdoing – four have gone to prison – and 21 airlines have coughed up more than $1.7 billion in fines in one of the largest criminal antitrust investigations in U.S. history. The court cases reveal a complex web of schemes between mostly international carriers willing to fix fees in lockstep with competitors for flights to and from the United States. Convicted airlines include British Airways, Korean Air, and Air France-KLM. No major U.S. carriers have been charged. The price-fixing unraveled largely because two airlines decided to come clean and turn in their co-conspirators. In late 2005, officials with German-based Lufthansa notified the Justice Department that the airline had been conspiring to set cargo surcharges. By Valentine’s Day 2006, FBI agents and their counterparts in Europe made the investigation public by raiding airline offices. After those raids, British-based Virgin Atlantic came forward about its role in a similar scheme to set fuel surcharges for passengers. Investigators eventually found a detailed paper trail laying out agreements, stretching back to 2000, to set passenger and cargo fuel surcharges The probe expanded to airlines doing business between the U.S. and Europe, Asia, South America, and Australia. The Lufthansa and Virgin Atlantic mea culpas allowed them to take advantage of a Justice Department leniency program because they helped crack the conspiracies. Former Associate Attorney General Kevin J. O’Connor, who oversaw Justice’s antitrust division in the late 2000s, said he doesn’t know why they confessed, but the result “demonstrates the effectiveness of that amnesty program.” Now in private practice, O’Connor said companies that confess for amnesty may be wisely trying to limit liabilities from illegal conduct. “Generally speaking, if they have an inkling they might get caught, they come in,” O’Connor said. “The theory might be that eventually these things will be exposed and why risk continuing.” Federal prosecutors and investigators declined to discuss details of the cases because they are still investigating. “Lufthansa Cargo fully cooperated with the investigation launched by DOJ,” Martin Riecken, Lufthansa’s director of corporate communications for the Americas said. Virgin Atlantic referred all questions to the Justice Department. Airlines and executives who didn’t come forward were charged with violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Two former airline executives were sentenced to six months in prison; two others were ordered to prison for eight months. Charges are pending against 15 executives, nine of whom are considered fugitives. Bruce McCaffrey, one-time vice president of freight for the Americas at the Australian carrier Qantas, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to restrain trade. He was sentenced to six months in prison in 2008. He admitted working with other airlines to fix cargo fuel surcharges between 2000 and 2006. Keith H. Packer, a former senior manager of sales and marketing for British Airways, pleaded to conspiracy to restrain trade and was sentenced to eight months in prison in 2008. He admitted joining the cargo conspiracy in 2002 and participating until February 2006. British Airways and Korean Air pleaded guilty to violating the Sherman act; each was fined $300 million in August 2007. British Airways admitted fixing cargo surcharges from 2002 to 2006 and passenger fuel surcharges from 2004 to 2006. Korean Air admitted fixing cargo and passenger surcharges from 2000 to 2006. Announcing four guilty pleas in June 2008, O’Connor said the case “conservatively, has affected billions of dollars of shipments. Estimates suggest that the harm to American consumers and businesses from this conspiracy is in the hundreds of millions of dollars. “As an example of the impact of the conspiracy, fuel surcharges imposed by some of the conspirators rose by as much as 1,000 percent during the conspiracy, far outpacing any percentage increases in fuel costs that existed during the same time period,” O’Connor said. In one of several lawsuits by passengers and cargo shippers now being heard in a California federal court, San Francisco-based lawyer Christopher Lebsock and others allege airline officials routinely gathered at industry meetings to discuss fuel costs and how to make up losses. Lebsock said they agreed to add or increase the fuel surcharges that are tacked onto passenger fares and cargo fees. “We have seen in public documents that they were concerned and wanted to raise revenue to offset the increasing price in fuel,” Lebsock said. According to published notes of an October 2005 meeting of airline representatives in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, a host of executives openly spoke about surcharges already in place. One official, identified in meeting minutes only by the initials” GF,” suggested the group create “a subcommittee to study this subject and come up with a joint proposal.” According to published notes of another meeting of airline representatives in Saudi Arabia in September 2004, “the participants agreed to make uniform policy for such (insurance and fuel) surcharges to be applied.” Not all airline officials at these meetings agreed to join the conspiracies. During a 2004 industry meeting in Thailand, executives from U.S. based-United Airlines and Northwest Airlines left the meeting when others started discussing setting fares and fuel surcharges, according to a court filing by lawyers in one class action suit. Warren Gerig, an international manager for United when he walked out of that meeting, declined to discuss the case. The Northwest executive was identified only as Sarathool M. and could not be reached. While meeting notes make it appear the discussions were open to anyone who accidently walked into the wrong ballroom, Lebsock and Justice officials believe executives were more careful to hide their activities. “My sense is they weren’t really open to the public,” Lebsock said. “They weren’t that stupid.” Lebsock said documents obtained in pretrial discovery make clear that many surcharge discussions carried over from large group meetings around the world to more private office settings and e-mail discussions According to one passenger lawsuit, several Asian airlines – including Cathay Pacific Airways, Japan Airlines, and All Nippon Airways – confined many discussions to phone calls and e-mails. Lebsock said evidence shows some airline executives tried to hide or destroy incriminating documents and e-mails. Lebsock believes the conspiracies were so well hidden that it’s possible they would have continued undetected had Lufthansa not come forward. “In the absence of someone coming forward, and ratting it out, it is very, very difficult to establish that there was a (conspiracy),” Lebsock said. ___ Online: Justice Department’s antitrust division: http://www.justice.gov/atr/index.html

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Lehman Brothers Battles With Investors

March 4, 2011

LONDON (By Sarah White) – A legal tussle between defunct Lehman Brothers (LEHMQ.PK) and investors in highly complex debt vehicles has drawn attention from financial professionals and British football clubs alike. The dispute reaches beyond the obscure clauses in the instruments caught up in the row, with consequences for the order in which creditors get paid out in a bankruptcy — a source of contention in football insolvencies too. Billions of dollars of derivatives are at stake, and risk losing their worth if the case goes against investors. A similar, widely-trailed case settled in the United States last year had already sparked alarm among lawyers, noteholders, and academics watching the securitization industry. One Manhattan federal court judge, calling for a review of a decision on the case last September before a settlement with Lehman was reached, cited its “potentially game-changing effect on the structured finance business.” She added that it had “potentially far-reaching ramifications for the international securities markets and has triggered significant uncertainty in the financial community.” The dispute centers on a series of credit-linked notes, part of only one of Lehman’s synthetic collateralized debt obligation (CDO) programs — known as Dante — valued at $12.5 billion at the time of the firm’s collapse in September 2008. The stakes are high for those owed money by Lehman, for whom derivative deals are a big chunk of what they are hoping to claw back. The creditors are pitted against a group of Australian investors known as Belmont in a UK appeal to the Supreme Court, where three days of hearings ended this week. A verdict is expected to emerge after several weeks, lawyers close to the case said. Both Lehman and the investors are hoping to seize the assets backing the deals, and any final ruling would set a precedent for how the priority of payments in billions of dollars worth of similar deals are worked out. LOOMING DOWNGRADES Investors need a validation of so-called flip clauses in the notes they hold, designed to reorder payment priorities in bankruptcies and allowing them to jump in ahead of Lehman. Trouble looms if they lose, as noteholders in deals with similar structures would find they had no guarantee of being paid out when other parties default. “Certainly for anything that is rated, the rating agencies may seek to downgrade in some cases. They are watching very carefully what happens with the litigation,” said Jennifer Marshall, a partner at Allen & Overy specializing in insolvency, whose clients have followed the case. “For non-rated transactions, I’m sure you’d find parties coming back to the table wanting to renegotiate.” The synthetic CDOs, which expose investors to a pool of insurance contracts on debt known as credit-default swaps, were in the main rated triple-A. Some of the legal arguments at stake in the exotic-sounding financial deals could also have a bearing for football clubs. The British taxman and the Premier League, the top league in the country, are intervening in proceedings, hoping for clarity on the priority of payments when clubs go bust. Footballers are usually paid out first, to the detriment of the taxman — a situation the UK Revenues and Customs department may be able to reverse if it can cite legal precedents. But a conclusion may yet take time to emerge. Lehman managed to settle with another group of Australian investors caught up in the Dante CDO row last November, after U.S. bankruptcy judge James Peck ruled in Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s favor, but UK courts found against it. Should Lehman lose its appeal at the Supreme Court, a transatlantic battle between the U.S. and British courts could be revived, if litigation heads back to the United States. Lawyers would have to work out which rulings to abide by, adding an extra lawyer of complexity to Lehman’s sprawling bankruptcy workout, the biggest and costliest in U.S. history. (Editing by David Cowell) Copyright 2011 Thomson Reuters. Click for Restrictions .

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Anglo Australian Resources Nl (ASX:AAR) Appoints Mr Christopher H Fyson As Chairman

January 21, 2011

Anglo Australian Resources Nl (ASX:AAR) Appoints Mr Christopher H Fyson As Chairman

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Forex Correlations Suggest Australian Dollar Good Proxy for Gold Trading

January 20, 2011

Forex Correlations Suggest Australian Dollar Good Proxy for Gold Trading

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British Pound Rally Slows Ahead of U.K. CPI, Australian Dollar Carves Head-And-Shoulders Top

January 14, 2011

British Pound Rally Slows Ahead of U.K. CPI, Australian Dollar Carves Head-And-Shoulders Top

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China Raises Reserve Ratios to Fight Inflation, Australian Dollar Tumbles

January 14, 2011

China Raises Reserve Ratios to Fight Inflation, Australian Dollar Tumbles

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China Raises Reserve Ratios to Fight Inflation, Australian Dollar Tumbles

January 14, 2011

China Raises Reserve Ratios to Fight Inflation, Australian Dollar Tumbles

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FINANCE VIDEO: Clifford Bennett Speaks on The Impact of The Queensland Floods, The Australian Dollar and A The Outlook for Equity and Commodity Markets

January 12, 2011

FINANCE VIDEO: Clifford Bennett Speaks on The Impact of The Queensland Floods, The Australian Dollar and A The Outlook for Equity and Commodity Markets

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Canadian Dollar Due For Correction, Australian Dollar Continues To Lag Behind

January 11, 2011

Canadian Dollar Due For Correction, Australian Dollar Continues To Lag Behind

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Canadian Dollar Due For Correction, Australian Dollar Continues To Lag Behind

January 11, 2011

Canadian Dollar Due For Correction, Australian Dollar Continues To Lag Behind

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Queensland Floods Impact to the Australian Dollar is Seen as Modest

January 6, 2011

Queensland Floods Impact to the Australian Dollar is Seen as Modest

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AUDUSD: Australian Dollar US Dollar Exchange Rate Forecast

January 5, 2011

AUDUSD: Australian Dollar US Dollar Exchange Rate Forecast

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AUDUSD: Australian Dollar US Dollar Exchange Rate Forecast

January 5, 2011

AUDUSD: Australian Dollar US Dollar Exchange Rate Forecast

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LA Private Equity Firm and Australian REIT Acquire 21 Property U.S. Portfolio

December 30, 2010

Sydney, Australia-based investors and Los Angeles-based private equity firm Saban Capital Group have acquired 21 office properties that comprised the U.S. office portfolio of the former Australian REIT Record Realty. The group purchased the portfolio at a 29% discount to net asset value. Real Estate Capital Partners Managed Investments Ltd. as responsible entity for Real Estate Capital Partners USA Property Trust (RCU), together with Saban Capital…

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China To Cut Crucial Rare Earths Export Quotas

December 29, 2010

BEIJING — China said it is reducing the amount of rare earths it will export for the first half of the year by more than 10 percent – likely to be an unpopular move worldwide since the minerals are vital to the manufacture of high-tech products. China accounts for 97 percent of the global production of rare earths, which are essential to devices as varied as cell phones, computer drives and hybrid cars. Countries were alarmed when Beijing blocked shipments of the minerals to Japan earlier this year amid a dispute over islands claimed by both countries. Concerns over China’s grip on rare earths has led countries on a hunt for alternative sources. A number of companies in North America – notably Molycorp Inc. in the U.S. and Thompson Creek Metals Co. in Canada – are hurrying to open or reopen rare earth mines. Two Australian companies are also preparing to mine rare earths. China has been reducing export quotas of rare earths over the past several years to cope with growing demand at home. A Commerce Ministry spokesman has also said that China is cutting its exploration, production and exports out of environmental concerns. Numbers released Tuesday by China’s Commerce Ministry show export quotas of the rare minerals will be down 11 percent next year as compared to the same period this year. China usually issues a second batch of quotas during the year, and it is not known how the figures will change later in 2011. The new numbers say China is allocating 14,446 tons (13,105 metric tons) of rare earths among 31 companies. China allocated 16,304 tons (14,790 metric tons) among 22 companies in the first batch of quotas this year. The ministry said in a online statement late Tuesday that the quotas for the rest of the year were still under discussion and would be released later. The statement also cautioned that it wasn’t appropriate to guess the trend of future quotas based on the first allocation. Earlier this month, state media reported that China plans to raise duties on some rare earth exports starting next year, but it did not say which minerals would be affected or how much the tax would be. A state media report Tuesday said China is preparing to set up a rare earths association that would include nearly all of the country’s leading rare earth companies, and could help them to coordinate their negotiating position. The report posted on the Sina Corp. portal said the association should be set up in May. The United States last week threatened to go to the World Trade Organization with its concerns over China and rare earths. When asked for comment during a regular press briefing Tuesday, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu declined to answer. But China has had to address the global concerns numerous times since the spat with Japan. “China is not using rare earth as a bargaining chip,” Wen Jiabao, China’s top economic official, told a China-European Union business summit in Brussels in October.

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Could China’s Latest Decision Lead To More U.S. Mining?

December 28, 2010

BEIJING — China said Tuesday it is reducing the amount of rare earths it will export next year by more than 10 percent – likely to be an unpopular move worldwide since the minerals are vital to the manufacture of high-tech products. China accounts for 97 percent of the global production of rare earths, which are essential to devices as varied as cell phones, computer drives and hybrid cars. Countries were alarmed when Beijing blocked shipments of the minerals to Japan earlier this year amid a dispute over disputed islands. Concerns over China’s grip on rare earths has led countries on a hunt for alternative sources. A number of companies in North America – notably Molycorp Inc. in the U.S. and Thompson Creek Metals Co. in Canada – are hurrying to open or reopen rare earth mines. Two Australian companies are also preparing to mine rare earths. Numbers released Tuesday by China’s Commerce Ministry show export quotas of the rare minerals will be down 11 percent next year as compared to the same period this year. China usually issues a second batch of quotas during the year, and it is not known how the figures will change later in 2011. The new numbers say China is allocating 14,446 tons (13,105 metric tons) of rare earths among 31 companies. China allocated 16,304 tons (14,790 metric tons) among 22 companies in the first batch of quotas this year. China has been reducing export quotas of rare earths over the past several years to cope with growing demand at home. A Commerce Ministry spokesman has also said that China is cutting its exploration, production and exports out of environmental concerns. Earlier this month, state media reported that China plans to raise duties on some rare earth exports starting next year, but it did not say which minerals would be affected or how much the tax would be. A state media report Tuesday said China is preparing to set up a rare earths association that would include nearly all of the country’s leading rare earth companies, and could help them to coordinate their negotiating position. The report posted on the Sina Corp. portal said the association should be set up in May. The United States last week threatened to go to the World Trade Organization with its concerns over China and rare earths. When asked for comment during a regular press briefing Tuesday, China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu declined to answer. But China has had to address the global concerns numerous times since the spat with Japan. “China is not using rare earth as a bargaining chip,” Wen Jiabao, China’s top economic official, told a China-European Union business summit in Brussels in October.

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Video: Chilton Says Riversdale Plugs Coking Coal `Gap’ for Rio

December 24, 2010

Dec. 24 (Bloomberg) — Peter Chilton, an investment analyst at Constellation Capital Management Ltd., talks about Rio Tinto Group’s A$3.9 billion ($3.9 billion) bid for Australian coking coal developer Riversdale Mining Ltd., and the potential for a rival bid from International Coal Ventures Ltd. ICVL appointed Citigroup Inc. to examine a possible takeover offer for the Sydney-based coal company with mines in Mozambique, the venture’s chairman C.S. Verma said yesterday. Chilton also discusses his investment strategy for mining stocks. He speaks from Sydney on Bloomberg Television’s “First Up.” (Source: Bloomberg)

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Australian Market Report of December 9, 2010: Indochine Mining Limited (ASX:IDC) Lists On Australian Stock Exchange

December 8, 2010

Australian Market Report of December 9, 2010: Indochine Mining Limited (ASX:IDC) Lists On Australian Stock Exchange

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Marian Salzman: Booting Up

December 3, 2010

This is the fifth in a series of 12 posts expounding on the 2011 forecasts in the annual trends report from Salzman, president of Euro RSCG Worldwide PR and an internationally respected trendspotter. Watch out in 2011 for the return of skin-thickening boot camps to toughen up kids and employees for the rigors of the 21st century. This new brand of take-it-square training is going to catch on like tinder in a world that just might be gentling its young people out of competitiveness. We might have educated our kids, stimulated them, taught them to care and share, and protected them from bad things, but we now have a generation, called millennials (at Euro RSCG Worldwide PR, the agency I run, we consider them to be currently 18 to 25 years old), that is smart, plugged-in and tech-savvy–but oversensitive. Former Wall Street Journal columnist Ron Alsop calls them trophy kids , and many corporate recruiters consider them case studies in entitlement . In the workplace, this can make for a cross-generational melee: conflicts between millennials who believe the office should be egalitarian, casual and quick to reward, and boomer-managers whose buttons get pushed by their young employees’ expectations of a gimme-ocracy. Another thing unwitting work cultures have had to face is not just the millennial employee but also his or her helicopter parents . In 2007, I told “60 Minutes” that millennials could be incorrigible. “You can’t really ask them to live and breathe the company,” I told Morley Safer, “because they’re living and breathing themselves–and that keeps them very busy.” Today, my POV is that they reflect the best and worst of all generations. Boot camps could harness their genuine passion for good and for getting businesses to clean up their act to help make them all-around strong. While there’s plenty of advice out there for corporate cultures wishing to recruit and retain this group with their needs in mind, I see a flip side: emotional resilience-conditioning workouts that will begin to prevail, tasked with toughening up young people to face that rough road called reality. Mindful of what New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has said he has wanted to tell his daughters (in a twist on how his parents used to get him to eat his dinner), “Finish your homework–people in China and India are starving for your job,” there isn’t just a lot of competition for jobs in the U.S. economy, but there’s also an achievement gap that has widened, and stuck, among Caucasian, Hispanic and African-American groups, who fall far behind Asian Americans’ generally very good school results. In California’s 2007 achievement gap report , Asian students ranked above Caucasian students in English-language arts and math proficiency by 4.3 and 13.9 percent percentage points, respectively, and performed at more than double the proficiency of Hispanics and African Americans. Two years later, these inequalities hadn’t changed . In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg touted a narrowed gap between these groups in 2010, but Asian students led the pack. Michael J. Petrilli, from the education think tank Thomas B. Fordham Institute, said , “On achievement, the story in New York City is of some modest progress, but not the miracle that the mayor and the chancellor would like to claim.” Some of the shape-up responsibility for this problem, which schools already shoulder, points to parenting. An ethic of old-fashioned, hard-assed knuckling down, less evident in today’s society, often makes a more adept and resilient student than a culture of parental indulgence. If these millennials aren’t tough enough to finish, much less excel in, school–and thus help sustain American competitiveness–the ramifications are extreme. Already in California, anxiety over marshaling a globally competitive science and engineering workforce for 2020 is over the top , and there are predictions of a giant shortfall of college degree-holding workers in general by 2025 if nothing changes. So, like it or not, overprotection is bad preparation for an übercompetitive world. We know that American (or Australian or European) educators and parents aren’t about to subject kids to conditions that prevail in emerging economies, let alone emulate the Spartans who left infants out on hillsides to weed out the weak. The NYU Child Study Center says , “The best-adjusted children, particularly in terms of social competence, had parents with an authoritative, moderate parenting style.” If you’ve got a kid at home, consider trying out a bit of “authoritative.” (Or consult Ph.D.s Sam Goldstein and Robert Brooks in Raising a Self-Disciplined Child: Help Your Child to Become More Responsible, Confident and Resilient –where they describe disciplinary and parenting styles that foster self-discipline and resilience .) Still, I see toughening boot camps as a cresting wave next year, with new curricula that are to thick skin what weight training is to fit muscle. It will be fascinating to watch this evolve–and to see what regulatory mechanisms might be established for entrepreneurs who can innovate tougher-character training without straying into abuse. There are pots of gold waiting for such organizations. Emerging clues for just who will lead in this realm hark back to some of what’s been shown to work with millennials: the success-breeds-success style. Stan Smith, a national director for human resources at accounting giant Deloitte, considers millennials to be team-oriented, not challenge-averse, and picky about who should lead them. They’re not anti-establishmentarian. And Pew Research has found something that might surprise about this tattooed and body-pierced cohort: Millennials are as likely as older Americans to think that it’s because of American business success that our country is strong. But with their generation more socially group-needy, one rule for the excelling boot camp strategy might be reciprocity. Says one boot-camp mentor blogger: “The exercise of trying to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of (bootcampers) and their performance also helps me examine my own strengths and weaknesses and how my actions may be perceived by others…. When I [maintain connections and communicate] right I cultivate reciprocal good will from my bootcampers, and having the right working relationships with future experts across the code base is incredibly useful in a company that moves as fast as ours and leaves very little documentation in its wake.” What cannot be doubted is that millennials are rising faster than sea levels, with just as unforeseeable consequences. If they just can’t or won’t see the experience of the older generation as special or valuable, it’s going to be through booting up that the values of hard work–including respecting, learning from experience and admitting when you’re wrong–are going to grow tender plants into tough stuff. Previously: “Mad as Hell–and Only Getting Madder” “Talk to the Hands” “Net Gain” “Public Mycasting System” On Monday: “Yes, We Can…Reinvent Ourselves”

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Euro Rally Short Lived, Australian Dollar Carves Head & Shoulders Top

November 22, 2010

Euro Rally Short Lived, Australian Dollar Carves Head & Shoulders Top

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